This disclosure relates generally to methods of fastening thermo pyrolytic graphite (TPG) to metal materials to serve as heatsinks for various uses and, more particularly, to releasably fastening TPG elements to a metal material using a wedge-lock system to form a heatsink.
Modern embedded computer systems contain very high thermal power electrical components in a volumetrically constrained environment. The volumes typically do not change as the power dissipation of the components increase, presenting significant challenges in the management of component temperatures. In the past, a variety of direct cooling techniques such as active or passive heatsinks composed of high thermally conductive materials such as aluminum and/or copper have been used to manage rising temperatures. These materials, however, are only sufficient if a relatively large amount of surface area is presented to the airstream, necessitating a physically larger heatsink structure that occupies a large amount of the total available volume. As the physical size of the heatsink increases, the ability of the material to rapidly carry heat to the extremities of the heatsink, thereby exposing the heat to the airstream, is diminished.
Thermo Pyrolytic Graphite (TPG) materials have been found to have the ability to provide better heat conduction in a single (X-Y) plane as compared to conventional metal materials. Furthermore, TPG has been found to have an improved overall conductivity as compared to copper. Recently, a method has been developed to embed TPG into an aluminum structure using a diffusion bonding process. The diffusion bonding process, while resulting in a very good thermal contact between the TPG material and the aluminum structure, has limitations in that specialized equipment is needed to create the TPG-embedded structures in a time-consuming process, resulting in an expensive product.
As such, there is a need for a method to create a cost-effective product having TPG fastened to a metal material, such as an aluminum structure, to form a metal heat-conducting structure (i.e., heatsink) to provide effective thermal conductivity in the X-Y plane. Additionally, it would be advantageous if the method were easily reproducible and could be performed in many various facilities using many various types of equipment.